And so, with a nod and a smile and a good-by he was gone. Anthony lay with the coverlet drawn up under his chin, and propped high with pillows; his head throbbed and swam; he drowsed between wakefulness and sleep, and strange pictures lit up his mind. There was a vessel that crossed his sleep--a slim, swift vessel, her sails filled with mist, and driving away over a darkened sea. She was fleeing from him, and he was following, making slow head against winds and storms. Though the ship was a great way off, he could see into her cabin; there was a light there, a yellow light with a spot of red at its heart--and beside this sat a man who wore a patch over one eye, and he smirked over Anthony's note-book, which he held in his hand. There were strange things in that book; there were matters that opposed each other fancifully, and told of ships and men and cargoes, and places; and there were other things, like shouted lies. Anthony had studied them and knew them well. And now, as he drowsed, the cabin was gone, the ship had disappeared, the sea had changed to land; but his thought still had to do with books. He sat before a great many of them; they were heavy, sober, and clean; they were the ledgers of Rufus Stevens' Sons, the solid books of a solid house; surely in them no wrong could thrive. But there were flaming lightnings in the sky; the world was full of pain and weariness, and the books held knowledge which he must have; so he began to open them. They seemed countless; each was like the other in its dull leather, and their rows stretched across plains and streams, and through cities, away among vague spaces, and disappeared in the rising of mists, the booming of waters, and the dashing of spray. And now, under his hand, were the books of Lucas, and the books of Carberry. These he especially desired. They were thick and seemed to promise pleasant things; but they opened evilly; the mind sprang back from their pages, repelled. But, for all that, they were well and carefully written, just as he had been told they would be. Lucas had set down his statements in a useful hand, clear and with excellent spacing. Carberry's way was well ordered; he had a confident, clerkly smoothness, which all but covered astonishments that caught the breath from one's lips. But Anthony found himself held among the pages of Lucas much oftener, for Lucas's day, so it seemed, had been one of rare daring; there had been courage and devilment in his time, and no great care. The waters had been awash with costly stuffs; ships were sucked to their doom, and dead men had floated down the byways of the sea.